Unlike The Beatles, Frank Zappa never had a hit single called “Revolution.” But this erstwhile San Diego music visionary and cultural provocateur did help inspire a nonviolent revolution that, in 1989, brought down the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

“Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground. He was one of the men who shaped the life of the generation which I belong to,” former Czech President Vaclav Havel said after Zappa’s death from cancer in late 1993.

Havel, who died in 2011, also hailed Zappa as “a friend of our fledgling democracy and one of the first foreign visitors to come here after (the revolution). I thought of him as a friend. Whenever I feel like escaping from the world of the presidency, I think of him.”

As innovative as he was prolific, Zappa may have inspired several revolutions. Credit for this goes to his expansive body of work, both as a solo artist and -- in the 1960s and early '70s -- as the leader of the Mothers of Invention, which impacted music, politics, social satire and contemporary culture in general.

A tireless and remarkably eclectic band leader and solo artist, Zappa made his national TV debut in 1963 on "The Steve Allen Show," on which he discussed his use of a bicycle as a musical instrument and then performed on one, using a violin bow. Before that decade ended, Zappa achieved an international prominence that he would sustain throughout his lifetime, and beyond.

The catalyst for his fame was Zappa's work as a songwriter and band leader. He deftly drew from rock, blues, jazz, funk, doo-wop, country, reggae and more, all with unusual skill and elan, although his greatest love was the classical music that he tirelessly composed for much of his life. His landmark albums include “We’re Only in It for the Money,” “Hot Rats,” “Broadway the Hard Way,” “Freak Out!” and Havel’s favorite, “Bongo Fury.”

From September through last month, no fewer than 65 Zappa albums were reissued by Universal Music, one of the world’s largest record companies. This is the second time his voluminous catalog — well, most of it — has been posthumously re-released,, both times under the careful supervision of his estate, which is headed by his widow, Gail.

‘Frank was our Elvis’

Today, 20 years after his death at the age of 52, Zappa’s impact is still being felt in a variety of ways. Then again, he is the only Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee whose intensely complex classical compositions are performed by symphony orchestras around the world.

Or, as Matt Groening, the creator of the hit animated TV series “The Simpsons,” told an interviewer in 1992: “Frank was our Elvis. … There’s a whole generation of people who do funny or weird things who grew up on Zappa’s music.”

People like San Diego guitar great Mike Keneally, who credits Zappa — a San Diego resident in the mid-1950s — as an inspirational role model “who practically saved my life at times when I was a teenager.” (Zappa's first-person reminiscences about living in San Diego appear on the final page of this article.)